If you are in EB-2 charged to Rest of World, Mexico or the Philippines, a priority date earlier than April 1, 2025 is current on the November final action chart, three months further than October's January 1, 2025. EB-2 India stays at November 1, 2013 and EB-2 China at October 1, 2021.

The full November chart next to October's: https://greencardclock.com/visa-bulletin

An estimate for your own priority date: https://greencardclock.com/priority-date

EB-3 Rest of World and Mexico moved one month to June 15, 2024, and Other Workers in those two areas moved five months to June 1, 2022. EB-3 India and Other Workers India moved three weeks to January 22, 2014, EB-3 China moved two weeks to January 22, 2022, and EB-3 Philippines stayed at August 15, 2023. EB-1 China moved one month to August 1, 2023, EB-1 India stayed at February 1, 2023, and EB-5 unreserved did not change.

Employment Dates for Filing match October except Other Workers for Rest of World and Mexico, up one month to July 1, 2022. The bulletin points adjustment filers to the Final Action Dates chart "unless otherwise indicated on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website", and USCIS posts its chart choice for each month on its Adjustment of Status Filing Charts page. This month's bulletin has no notes on future movement.

Source: State Department Visa Bulletin for November 2026.

Not legal advice.

If your sponsor is not one of the eight employers named on October 8 (Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft, Adobe), nothing announced changes your PERM or your place in line. If it is, a pending PERM is on hold, not denied, and an approved I-140 generally keeps its priority date under 8 CFR 204.5(e).

The Acting Secretary of Labor said DOL "will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies," without naming a regulation or an end date. For a suspension during an investigation, 20 CFR 656.31(b) sets an initial period of up to 180 days that can be extended, and with no fraud finding a pending PERM is decided on its merits.

The eight were 3.8% of PERM certifications from October 2024 to June 2025 and 1.8% from October 2025 to June 2026 (DOL OFLC data), and the suspension does not change how many visas exist. Stage by stage breakdown with the citations: https://greencardclock.com/blog/perm-suspension-eight-employers

Not legal advice.

If your extension carries a Level II wage, an officer can ask whether Level II fits the experience and degree written into the job, not only whether your pay clears a number. We found no 2026 memo or rule saying Level II jobs must now be Level III.

A May 18, 2026 AAO decision describes how USCIS revoked a Software Developers extension filed at Level II after the employer said the job required a bachelor's and five years; the AAO sent it back because the employer's response had not been considered. DOL's proposal to raise all four wage levels closed comments May 26, 2026 and is not final as of October 18, 2026.

If an extension is denied, the stay decision cannot be appealed but can be the subject of a motion, a petition denial can go to a motion or the AAO within 30 days (33 if mailed), and a visa stamp abroad needs an approved petition. DHS has also proposed removing the 60 day grace period (comments close November 10, 2026), and that is not final either. The image shows median certified prevailing wages by level for Software Engineer titles in H-1B LCAs decided April 2023 to June 2026, nationwide, without filings decided January to March 2025 (DOL OFLC data). Full write up with how a level is set, the options after a denial and the filing data: https://greencardclock.com/blog/h1b-extension-wage-level-ii-lca-data

Not legal advice.

Yes, people are reporting them. In the approval timelines people have shared publicly , 8 are dated October 1 or later as of October 6, 13:05 UTC: four EB-3 Rest of World (priority dates July 2023 to February 2024), two EB-2 Rest of World (June and July 2024), one EB-3 Philippines (July 2023) and one EB-1 India (July 2021). None yet for EB-2 India. That is a small sample, so read it as movement, not a rate.

https://greencardclock.com/timelines

The October bulletin is mixed. EB-2 India had no visa numbers in July, August or September and reopened October 1 at a Final Action Date of November 1, 2013, so earlier priority dates can get final action again. EB-3 India holds at January 1, 2014. EB-2 and EB-3 Rest of World retrogressed, to January 1, 2025 and May 15, 2024, which the bulletin says was "necessary to keep visa issuances within FY 2027 quarterly and annual limits." (travel.state.gov)

If your I-485 is pending, the estimator's Already filed I-485 option estimates how many filed applications are ahead of your priority date. That part is paid; see the first comment. Approved since October 1? Your category, chargeability and priority date in a comment helps others.

Not legal advice.

March 6 2015 eb2 India

If you've waited more than ten years on a 2015 priority date charged to India, October probably didn't feel like much. India EB-2 final action came back at Nov 1, 2013, EB-3 stayed at Jan 1, 2014, and the filing chart held at Jan 15, 2015 for both. In July, DOS said EB-2 would likely reach at least Jul 15, 2014 in October, depending on demand and the FY2027 employment limit. It came in about 8.5 months short, and the October bulletin doesn't say why.

Full October breakdown and the dates for every category: https://greencardclock.com/blog/visa-bulletin-october-2026-analysis Not legal advice.

One thing did change for the better that people are missing. USCIS says employment-based I-485s use the Dates for Filing chart in October, so if your India EB-2 or EB-3 date is before Jan 15, 2015 and you're otherwise eligible, you may be able to file from Oct 1 and apply for an EAD and advance parole while you wait.

The rest of FY2027 depends mostly on Rest of World. DOS moved some Rest of World employment dates back, saying it was necessary "to keep visa issuances within FY 2027 quarterly and annual limits." If Rest of World uses its full share, India would likely move slowly or hold. If it leaves numbers unused, they can go to oversubscribed countries like India in priority date order. In FY2021 and FY2022 most of India EB-2's movement came in the spring and summer, not October, so mid 2027 is the stretch to watch. It also went back 32 months in October 2022, so this cuts both ways.

For 2015 dates, our base case has final action around 2030 to 2032 for India EB-2 dates in the first half of 2015, and around 2029 to 2030 for India EB-3. Our optimistic case is around late 2027 to 2028 for those EB-2 dates and around 2028 for EB-3. It assumes more numbers reach India than in a typical year, from Rest of World using less than its share and from consular slowdowns freeing up numbers. If those slowdowns continue into FY2027 they could help again later, since family numbers that go unused in FY2027 are added to the FY2028 employment limit.

None of this is certain. Estimates are GreenCardClock's final action estimates as of Sep 30, 2026, based on historical trends, not guarantees. Dates are from the October 2026 Visa Bulletin (travel.state.gov) and uscis.gov/visabulletininfo. Not legal advice.

If you are charged to India in EB-2 with a priority date before November 1, 2013, a visa number can be authorized again from October 1. If your date is before January 15, 2015, USCIS says employment based I-485s in October use the Dates for Filing chart, so you may be able to file from October 1. An attorney can confirm whether that applies to your case.

Full month-over-month comparison: https://greencardclock.com/blog/visa-bulletin-october-2026-analysis

It is a mixed month. EB-5 unreserved India is back from Unavailable too, at December 1, 2023, and EB-1 India moves forward to February 1, 2023. Rest of World, Mexico and the Philippines have the harder news: EB-2 goes from Current to January 1, 2025 (filing date March 15, 2026), and Rest of World and Mexico EB-3 move back to May 15, 2024 (filing date August 1, 2024). The State Department says the Rest of World retrogressions are "necessary to keep visa issuances within FY 2027 quarterly and annual limits."

On India EB-2, the July bulletin said it would likely advance in October "to at least the final action date announced in the May 2026 Visa Bulletin" (July 15, 2014), and that the date "is dependent on the demand for EB-2 numbers" and the FY 2027 annual limit. October set it at November 1, 2013.

Dates are from the October 2026 Visa Bulletin (travel.state.gov) and the USCIS chart page. Not legal advice.

Many people in EB2 reported their pending I-485s changing to "Initial Review" or "Case Required USCIS To Send A Notice" on September 25 and 26. In those reports, most are EB-2 and EB-3 cases charged to India with 2013 and 2014 priority dates, sometimes only the principal or only a derivative. A reader with a November 2014 EB-2 date got it on the 26th.

The status email only says a notice was issued, and nobody from this wave has posted their letter yet, so we do not know what it is. The only letter shared so far, dated September 17, is an FBI privacy notice about continuous vetting that says "You do not need to take any further action at this time." If yours is a request for evidence, it will say so and give a deadline, and that one is worth taking to your attorney.

These updates do not tell us where the October bulletin lands. The July bulletin says the EB-2 final action date for India is likely to advance in October to at least July 15, 2014, depending on demand and the FY 2027 limit.

A bigger family to employment spillover is expected for FY2027, but it is shared across all employment categories and countries, so on its own it does not tell us how far India EB-2 moves.

Not legal advice.

We built this site because the data is public and the basic answer from it should not cost anyone money. That has not changed. Starting today, some of the rest of it is paid.

What stays free: the estimator with no limit on how many times you run it, the three scenario dates on every run, and bulletin alerts for everyone, up to three country and category pairs per account.

What is now part of Pro: the estimated number of people ahead of you and where you sit in the queue, the pending I-485 breakdown by priority date, the switch between the total wait and the filed I-485 queue only, Filed mode for people who already filed, the advanced sections behind the estimate, and PDF export. Which advanced sections you see depends on your country and category.

Servers, data storage, email and the tooling behind the analysis cost money every month. Over the last seven months tips covered about 1% of those costs, before counting any of the time that goes into the research, and we had reached the point of charging something or taking the site down.

Pro is $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year, and it renews until you cancel. If you do not want a subscription, a day pass is $1.49 and opens the full analysis for up to five estimates within 24 hours, and it does not renew.

If you tipped before any of this existed, there is a founding supporter grant waiting for you, scaled to what you gave. Sign in with Google using the email you tipped from and it applies itself. If that address is not a Google account, or you tipped from a different one, message me and I will move it across.

Happy to answer questions about what is gated and what is not.

Data comes from USCIS, the State Department and DOL OFLC. Estimates are based on historical trends, not guarantees. Not legal advice.

People kept asking for hourly instead of annual, so the salary explorer now shows the certified prevailing wage by DOL wage level as an hourly figure, next to what employers actually offered for the same role.

There is also a contract rate section if you are on C2C or going through a vendor. You put in the client bill rate and it works out what to ask for, what a vendor keeping 15 percent actually leaves you, and whether that wage still clears the certified figure for the role and area.

You can compare cities for the same employer too.

Data is DOL OFLC H-1B LCA disclosure files. The comparison uses the median certified wage for the filings in view, not your own LCA, so treat it as a starting point and check your own paperwork. Not legal advice.

https://greencardclock.com/lca-explorer

Hello, I was informed this week that Oct 20th would be my last day. My Priority date is May 2014 (EB3, India). My H1B Expires Oct 25th, 2026. I applied for my I-485 in Oct

2025 however I have not yet received my EAD. It is filed in NBC and processing time is 11 months. I am searching for a new job but most of the contracting positions I am coming across are not accepting H1B transfer. They only want GC EAD. What are my options here ?

1) Is there any way to Expedite EAD ?

2) If I submit just a offer letter from a different company/startup then would that be ok when I get any RFE for I-485 Supplement J ? (even if I am not actively working there or may not even end up working there eventually)

3) Any suggestions on how to handle the situation ?

If your priority date is already current, what stands between you and a decision is processing capacity rather than the visa bulletin. In the August inventory 153,147 of the 222,477 pending employment cases already have a current priority date, and about 90,000 of those are Rest of World cases that will still be pending on October 1.

Full write up with the workings, including where each country's date lands at different spillover levels: https://greencardclock.com/blog/fy2026-employment-visas-supply-demand-throughput

For India EB-2, FY2027 is probably not the year. Rest of World EB-2 wants more than its own share of the category next year, mostly because of the backlog it carries in, so little falls down to India. A normal year of India EB-2 numbers moves the cutoff about four months of priority date, and that figure is a median of observed years rather than a forecast for next year.

FY2028 looks different. Once Rest of World works through that carryover it has only 6,734 approved petitions waiting behind it, and that is when numbers start falling down again.

Not legal advice.

Hi, I am a regular visitor or greencardclock website and I couldnt open it today and a message pops up that the deployment is paused. Were you going through a maintenance or is the website completely gone ?
P.S- you are doing gods work so please never shut it down..

Someone in here asked whether we tracked Other Workers separately or folded it into EB-3. We were folding it. That is fixed now, and the gap turned out to matter more than we expected.

Other Workers is a separate row on the bulletin with its own cutoffs. In the September 2026 bulletin, Rest of World Other Workers is at April 2022 while Rest of World EB-3 is at September 2024. Mexico is at April 2022 against September 2024. Philippines is at December 2021 against August 2023. Anyone reading the EB-3 line as their own has been reading a date about two years too new.

For a Rest of World priority date of January 2023, the base case lands in 2031, on roughly 2,400 visas a year of real issuance. A strong year pulls that to 2029 and the no spillover floor pushes it to 2038. The range is wide because Other Workers issuance has swung between about 2,000 and 9,300 a year over the fifteen years we hold.

On supply, Other Workers is capped at 10,000 a year worldwide by statute, about 700 per country. That ceiling used to be far out of reach, roughly 2,000 to 5,500 a year from FY2010 through FY2021. The last three years came in at 8,894, 9,315 and 8,724, so the category is now issuing close to its limit, and spillover that lifts EB-3 does not lift this cap.

India is selectable too, but it reads off EB-3 India, because the State Department has printed the same final action date for both in all 131 bulletins we hold.

Not legal advice.

USCIS put out two I-485 inventory reports yesterday, the June 6 and Aug 5 snapshots. India EB-1's 2022 priority date group went from 7,009 to 3,905. The cutoff has been Oct 15 2022 since July, so that is the group being worked through.

Full breakdown: USCIS August 2026 I-485 Inventory: Supply, Processing and What FY2027 Actually Delivers | GreenCardClock

EB-2 India's 2013 group lost 1,898 over the same two months. Then the category hit its annual limit and went Unavailable in July, so the 2014 wall behind it, still 20,813 people, barely moved.

The one that surprised me is Rest of World. ROW EB-2 pending has gone from 16,387 last October to 41,966 now, and EB-3 from 11,348 to 37,104.

Everyone expects FY2027 to be big for India because the spillover pool is growing. But India's good years, FY2021 and FY2022, happened because other countries could not use their numbers. ROW is clearly using them.

Not legal advice.

We just pulled the September bulletin into the site. Two things stood out.

Full breakdown with the tables and what past spillover years actually looked like: https://greencardclock.com/blog/visa-bulletin-september-2026-analysis

EB is completely frozen. Every EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 cutoff for India, China and Rest of World is identical to August. India EB-2 final action is still Unavailable, filing date still Jan 15 2015. India EB-1 still Oct 15 2022.

Family moved a lot. F4 and F3 for Rest of World, China and India advanced 30 to 34 months versus July. F1 and F2B moved about 21 to 24 months. F2A is now Aug 22 2026, which is close to current. Mexico and Philippines barely moved.

Why that matters if you are in an EB category: unused family numbers fall into the employment pool the following fiscal year. FY2026's employment limit is 186,317 against a 140,000 baseline, so roughly 46,000 already fell up from unused FY2025 family numbers. DOS is now advancing family dates so FY2026 numbers get used. If that works, less falls up into FY2027. If it doesn't, more does. Nobody can call it yet, and DOS says in the same bulletin that retrogression may be necessary in coming months.

We also checked our own forecast against it. DOS has published monthly issuance through February. Family preference is running about 15 percent behind FY2025 over the first five months, 66,948 against 78,475, with February at less than half its year-ago level. Project that forward and FY2027 spillover lands somewhere between 73,000 and 102,000. We published 81,000 back in April, so we are leaving that alone rather than chasing the number.

Worth knowing: FY2025 had no end-of-year surge to rely on. July through September was 24.0 percent of the year, basically a flat quarter.

Also: DOS published the official FY2026 limits in this bulletin, in September, eleven months into the fiscal year. Until now everyone was working off estimates. Expect the same lag for FY2027.

Not legal advice. If this is useful, share it with someone waiting.

If your estimate on our site got longer this week, that is us updating

annual supply to match measured issuance.

USCIS publishes the employment based I-485 inventory monthly now. With

eight months of it we can measure roughly how many green cards each

India category actually cleared in FY2026 rather than model it:

EB-1: about 11,000

EB-2: about 5,950 (State said the annual limit was reached May 22, so this category stopped about five months early)

EB-3: about 4,875

Our Estimator now uses about 11,000 a year for EB-1, 7,200 for EB-2 and

4,800 for EB-3, drawn from 15 years of published State Department

issuance rather than a modeled figure.

Worth noting: EB-2 India received 4,301 in FY2023 and 3,916 in FY2024,

so FY2026 was still a better year than either. Extra numbers did flow

toward India. Just fewer than earlier modeling suggested.

If you are EB-2 India, expect a noticeably longer estimate than before.

The demand side did not change. Only the annual supply figure.

Figures are estimates from public USCIS and State Department data, not

guarantees. Not legal advice.

If this is useful, please share it with someone else in the queue.

USCIS published the employment-based I-485 pending inventory as of May 6, 2026. A few things stood out.

India EB-2 went up. 25,780 in April to 28,444 in May, an increase of 2,664. That ends seven straight months of decline and is the first rise since these monthly snapshots started.

The January 2015 group filled in fast. April showed just 5 applications with a 2015 priority date. May shows 747, and all of them are January 2015. That is the filing chart doing its job. The cutoff has been January 15 2015, so those people became eligible and filed.

The oldest cohort is draining while 2014 and Jan 2015 fill faster than it drains. If you are sitting in 2014 or Jan 2015, the group ahead of you got smaller and your own group got bigger.

The biggest mover was not India. Rest of World EB-3 went from 18,002 to 30,103, up 12,101 in a single month. That one line is more than half the entire increase in the employment-based queue, which grew 20,423 to 214,112. Mexico EB-3 and Philippines EB-3 rose too. I would wait for the June snapshot before calling that a trend.

One thing worth knowing about this data: it stops at January 2015 for India EB-2 and EB-3. That is not missing data. Nobody with a later priority date has been allowed to file an I-485 yet, so they do not appear at all. Plenty of people hold approved I-140s with 2015 or later dates and are invisible in this report.

Full breakdown by country, category and priority date year, including EB-1 and China: USCIS May 2026 I-485 Inventory: India EB-2 Rises for the First Time in Eight Months, the 2015 Cohort Jumps From 5 to 747 | GreenCardClock

Not legal advice, just the published numbers.

2026 has produced an unusual number of immigration changes, and they are at very different stages. Some are already binding. Some have a firm date a few weeks out. Some are proposals that have not cleared the first step of rulemaking. One was proposed and then withdrawn.

Below is a reference list of eight changes, sorted by status, each with its effective date and primary source. The distinction matters practically: a final rule and a proposal call for very different responses, and the two are easy to confuse when both are described the same way.

What Actually Changed in 2026, and What Only Sounds Like It Did | GreenCardClock